Microsoft have updated their Office Accounting application to version 2008 and it comes in both Professional “paid for” and an Express “free” version.

If you run a small business with international clients, you might want to shell out a few bucks for the professional accounting package with support for things like multiple currencies and multiuser access. But if you’re self employed and are just looking for a way to manage accounts, track invoices and bill payment, and a few other basic business features, the free version looks pretty nice.

Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2008 is a free, easy-to-use accounting software that works with our existing Office suite of applications which helps us to manage our small and home-based businesses.

You can get your task started in minutes with the help of a step by step interview wizard. You can create invoices, track time and expenses and bank online, plus share it with other Microsoft Office system programs.

You can easily import your data from Microsoft Money, Office Excel etc as earlier to start working from right where you left. You won’t even have any difficulty finding features and tools since most of them are very similar to Microsoft Office.

This free version of Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2008 is designed for US and UK based small businesses only and does not support local requirements outside of these two countries.

It works with Windows XP/2003 and Server/Vista and the setup file is of 225MB. You can…..

Download from here

Windows XP has services that make it possible for other people to access your computer remotely.But if your PC is not part of a network, it’s best to turn them off. Here’s how:

1. Go to Start – Settings – Control Panel
2. Double-click the System icon
3. Select the Remote tab
4. Uncheck Allow Remote Assistance invitations to be sent from this computer
5. In the same tab click Advanced
6. Uncheck Allow users to connect remotely to this computer
7. Click Apply, then click OK

That’s it.

It sometimes happens to the user that he want to user his desired picture to be displayed at the thumbnail of the folder for may be for his remembering function, or for some other reason.

In Windows Explorer window, when files and folders are listed in Extra Large Icons, Large Icons, Medium Icons and Tiles view, Windows Vista/XP can show a preview thumbnail on the icons of folders itself using content inside the folders, normally image and photo or file type icon if there is no graphic file inside the folder.

The thumbnail preview picture on folder’s icon listing in Windows Explorer window allows user to have a quick yet comprehensive glance about the file contents that may contains inside the folders. However, sometimes, the thumbnail preview image is not the one that user wants. In this case, user can customize or self define a picture to be used, placed and showed on the folder icon.

1. In Windows Explorer, at folder parent level, right click on the folder that want to change its preview image on folder icon, and then select Properties.
2. Click on Customize tab.
3. Under Folder pictures section, click on Choose File button.
4. In “Browse” dialog box appears, select an image file to represent the folder and to show on the folder icon when viewing directory listing in supported views, and click Open.
5. The selected picture will be used as thumbnail preview image on folder icon with immediate effect.
6. Remove the user-set folder picture, click on Restore Default button instead.

[Via: mydigitallife]

In Vista, by default, the advanced write caching feature of SATA hard drives is not enabled.

• To enable it,
• Write ‘devmgmt.msc‘ in start menu search bar and hit enter
  It will open the Device Manager.
• In Left Hand Side, select Disk Drives and right click on it.
• Open its Properties and got to Policies tab.
• There select Enable Advanced Performance.
• Click OK.

That’s it.

It will definitely increase your Hard drive speed.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. It associates various information with domain names assigned to such participants. Most importantly, it translates humanly meaningful domain names to the numerical (binary) identifiers associated with networking equipment for the purpose of locating and addressing these devices world-wide.

Many times there comes a error while debugging or developing web-sites that “Unable to resolve” - DNS requests. This can be very unpleasant. As long as that failed entry is in your DNS cache, your box will continue to give you a “Unable to resolve” error. For that you have to clear your DNS cache. For that do the following…

• Got to Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt.
• If you are not logged in as Administrator than Right click on Command Prompt and ‘Run As Administrator‘.
• Type the following and hit enter:
  ipconfig /flushdns
• You should be able to see a confirmation dialog window:Windows IP Configuration.
  Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.

That’s all you have to do.

It is really very easy to modify “Send To” folder in Windows XP whereas it little bit messy in Windows Vista. Here the steps how to do that…

Steps:

1. Open the Control Panel, then Folder Options,
2. then move to the View tab and select the option labeled ‘Show hidden files and folders’ and click OK.
3. Now click Start, Computer, and open the drive where Windows is installed.
4. Open the folder called users, then the one with your user name and navigate through the folders AppData, Roaming, Microsoft, Windows and finally “Send To”.
5. Add any shortcuts you want in the “Send To” menu to this folder.

That’s it.

Note: Again you can delete the shortcut which you don’t want in the “Send To” folder.

This is a basic problem which is being faced by most of us that “Show hidden files and folders” is not working at all. If you select the radio button “Show hidden files and folders”, and then press Ok .. the changes would just disappear upon opening the dialog again. This can be some virus attack after which the Windows registry is not being updated properly. So making “Show hidden files and folder” work we have to make some changes in the registry. For that we have many methods, some of them are…

First Method:

This is general thing which should you try when something unexpected things happens to your computer. Just make a “System Restore”. You may fix this problem.

1. Go to “Start” ->”All Programs”
2. Then “Accessories” -> “System Tools”
3. Here you find “System Restore”

Just make a Restore to some previous date. That’s it.

Second Method:

1. Click “Start” -> “Run…” (or press Windows key + R)
2. Type “regedit” and click “Ok”.
3. Find the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL
4. Look at the “CheckedValue” key… This should be a DWORD key. If it isn’t, delete the key.
5. Create a new key called “CheckedValue” as a DWORD (hexadecimal) with a value of 1.
6. The “Show hidden files & folders” check box should now work normally.

Third Method:

1. Click “Start” -> “Run…” (or press Windows key + R)
2. Type “regedit” and click “Ok”.
3. Go to this key:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
4. In the right hand area, double click hidden and change the value to 1.

Now you will be able to see the changes have taken effect.

If none of the method works then you have to use some virus removal software. One of them is..

Fourth Method:

Try to download one of the software from here

Download:

Changing Windows Vista theme is not difficult. Just follow these simple steps to set up a new Windows Vista theme, or select the “Classic” Windows theme.

To make the Start menu work in Classic mode:

• RIGHT Click the Start button
• Click Properties
• Choose Classic Start menu
• Click Apply and OK

Now how to change the Theme. Follow these steps…

• RIGHT Click the Desktop
• Click Personalize
• Click Themes
• Click the Theme Choices pull down menu and choose “Classic”
• Click Apply and OK

To rename the ‘Recycle Bin’ on Windows Vista we have too again go to same registry editor and have to navigate some differnet key from which we done in Windows XP. For that

Steps:

* Go to Run
* Type ‘Regedit.exe’ and press enter
* Navigate the following key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \         Explorer \CLSID \ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}

* Double-click (’default’) (on right hand side)
* Replace the existing text (”Recycle Bin”) with your desired text
* Exit the Registry Editor.